Table of Contents

Life

As a student, Caselli studied religion, science, history, and literature. Along with his interest in science, he studied to become a Catholic priest, ordained in 1836.

Pantelegraph

The name pantelegraph was a combination of the words “telegraph” – a system for transmitting messages over long distance wires, and “pantograph,” a machine that was used to copy drawings and words.

While teaching physics at the University of Florence, he focused his research on the transmission of image and simple words. Working on similar projects at the time were Alexander Bain and Frederick Bakewell. Caselli’s largest challenge was working on synchronization between the transmitter and receiver of the machine.

Caselli’s system was different from that of Bain and Bakewell‘s was it used a regulating clock to help the sending and receiving mechanism working together – synchronization was the major problem experienced by other facsimile inventors at the time (ironically, Alexander Bain‘s experience was primarily as a clockmaker).

The pantelegraph worked by making an image with non-conductive ink onto a piece of tin foil. As a stylus passes over it the tin foil, it lightly touches it, passing with parallel scans slightly apart (similar to the technology of faxing today that scans line by line).

The pantelegraph then conducts electricity where there is ink and no ink on the page. Telegraph lines (or similar system) are used to transmit the signal. The receiver on the opposite end then takes the signal and writes ink onto the paper.

In 1860Napoleon saw a demonstration of the pantelegraph and placed orders for the service to work within the French national telegraph network. With the help of Napoleon (both with access to the telegraph network as well as financial), the pantelegraph was successfully tested over 800km between Paris and Marseille. Through French law, it was enacted in 1864 that it would be officially accepted, with operations starting in 1865 between Paris and Lyon, extended to Marseille in 1867.